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Rockage 4.0

On February 6th-8th, 2015, Rockage 4.0 held their annual event at the newly refurbished San Jose State University Student Union Ballroom. This time, it was able to expand what they had before the renovation which allowed everything to be a bit more spaced out. There were now two rooms for performances.

First and foremost, I didn’t come to the event to listen to music. To be honest, none of the musical acts really enticed me nor did I want to go see any of the panels. I’ve already seen one get booed at Capcom Cup. I really just came there to hang out, play some video games, and hopefully win some tournaments. I actually really wanted to win the tournaments because it’s my only chance to actually win more than one.

Smash 4 was the hot game at that point which was the cause for multiple tournaments for this title. There were round robins, 1v1 single eliminations, 8 player Smash tournaments, and much more. I believe the only ones where I did pretty well were any of the 8 player Smash ones due to my extremely lame play style. 1 on 1 was a whole different ballgame where I was unable to adapt to survive.

I was able to take first place in some games. I was able to win Capcom vs SNK on a pad which made me happy. I actually knew how to play the game as opposed to my opponents because they didn’t know about the ratios of the characters in the game.

I also was able to win Streets of Rage 2 in versus mode because I too knew the game well enough to know what works and what doesn’t. It also helps that I had been playing that game for year.

The tournament that I won which meant the most was winning Mario Kart: Double Dash because it was a team tournament. I had entered it with TSP | Badcat which we had sponsored for the event. We had a strategy for every situation whether it be racing, using weapons, or even battle mode. It was great to win as a team to share the joys of winning.

Other games Team Sturdy Pine had success in included Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Tournament Fighters where I finished 2nd while Badcat finished 1st, Street Fighter 3: 3rd Strike where we both finished in the top 4, Nidhogg where we also both finished in top 4, and much more.

Off to the bad parts we go! There were many issues that were to be had. Many of the planned tournaments never happened as I had actually practiced in such as Marvel vs Capcom 2, Street Fighter 2: Hyper Fighting, Ultra Street Fighter IV, and Ultimate Marvel vs Capcom 3. I wanted to win at a game I actually played.

The other main issues were just the set ups. For the modern games, the monitors were a bit laggy so input errors were bound to happen. One of the booths ran on an emulator which also had a bit of severe lag. That booth also forced us to play on pad because our dual modded fight sticks somehow didn’t work even though it should have since it’s usable on PC. It was also a bit tough to run tournaments with just single elimination since I’ve gotten accustomed to participating in double elimination.

It was one of my more successful tournaments granted I played against non tournament players, but the feeling of winning made me feel like I could carry it over to some other tournament no matter what the format was.

One thing I want to see is having the event organizers legitimately reaching out to members of specific communities whether it be the fighting game community to draw people to play fighting games or the Smash community since they always come out in large numbers. I also do think that if they invited speed runners, it would generate a lot of hype. PC gamers would also come out if there were competitions for League of Legends or Counter Strike available.
Written by: Timtastic